1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording/reproducing apparatus with a function of reducing a designated image in video data, and storing it as a thumbnail image in a recording medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
A recording/reproducing apparatus using an easy-random-accessible medium such as a magnetic disk apparatus, employs a so-called thumbnail display function of displaying, on a screen, reduced images corresponding to several scenes (images) in recorded video data, which is used to facilitate the reproduction of a desired video data. This apparatus can display the reduced image in a short time by pre-creating the reduced image, pre-storing it as a thumbnail image in a recording medium or a memory device, and reproducing the pre-stored, reduced image at the time of thumbnail display.
Recently, the limitation that, for example, only one copying operation of broadcasted video data is enabled has come to be employed to satisfy a demand of a copyright owner. Video data obtained by a first copying operation will hereinafter be referred to as a “first-generation copy”, and video data obtained by a second copying operation as a “second-generation copy”. If a reduced image, which is created from video data once recorded in a recording medium incorporated in a magnetic disk apparatus, is recorded in a recording medium, the recorded, reduced image can be interpreted as a second-generation copy. Accordingly, it is possible that this reduced image may violate the limitation of allowing only-one-generation copy.